During the Holocaust, the logistics of systematically imprisoning and eliminating six million Jews and other "undesirables" could not have been done simply by the Nazi Party and conservative Germany. Many other factions and individuals contributed to the facilitation of the Holocaust and its continued operation on both civilian and military levels. There were many reasons why people collaborated with the Nazis, and the results were often much more widespread than the Germans themselves could have hoped for. Collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust was a vital component that contributed to the substantial number of victims accumulated during this dreadful era of human history.
Reasons for collaboration
Among the collaborators during the Holocaust were the allies of Nazi Germany (including the rest of the Axis powers); satellite states, and the people on the ground, from civilians to police, and even those who were under occupation at the time. The reasons for combining forces in such a heinous practice were myriad and complex; there were many different collaborators from satellite states who shared Nazi Germany's hatred for Jews, and wished to join in the genocide - these included the forces of Belorussia and Ukraine. There were many who also sought to advance in the German or Axis ranks, or who got greedy with the prospect of wealth as a reward for their service. Some people were fellow Jews who collaborated with the Germans to find other Jews in exchange for their own lives - sometimes, their lives would merely be extended, or there would be the promise of saving the lives of their families (Glowinski and Shore, p. 42). Some of the Jewish leadership even collaborated with the Germans - The Jewish Councils have been accused of complicity in many of Nazi Germany's activities in the ghettos, ostensibly to allow their continued operations in organizing and bringing supplies to those Jews complying within the ghetto (Bergen, p. 115). The Volksdeutsche were Polish citizens of German ancestry who signed up to assist the Nazis in the war effort, likely to save their lives and to distance themselves from the dangerous underground.
Those who collaborated with the Nazis did so in a number of ways. Some committed military forces and their own police to tracking down and capturing/killing Jews, such as teh Belarussian and Ukrainian police forces, who were said to have killed more than a million Jews, along with Himmler's police and other local collaborators. These individuals and armies did so in order to perpetuate the grand scheme that they were helping to purify Europe; these countries already had create distrust of Jews, and had histories of anti-Semitism. Combined with their desire to cooperate and spare themselves the destruction that would come from challenging the Third Reich, many of Germany's allies, big and small, contributed to the collection and hunting of Jews throughout Europe. In the ghettos, the Jewish Councils collaborated merely by abiding by the wishes of their Nazi overlords; by not resisting, they were sparing their own lives, but allowing others to die instead. The Councils in particular kept tabs on every Jew in the ghettos, noting where they were and what they had, so that the gestapo could easily track them down.
The results of the varying kinds of collaboration were many. As a result of the collaboration between Ukraine, Belorussia, and other such nation states, Himmler had a much bigger independent force by which he could go out and kill escaped and hiding Jews. In the ghettos and camps, the recordkeeping and collaboration of the Jewish Councils made it much easier for SS to find and locate errant Jews suspected of wrongdoing. The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, a volunteer militia whose purpose was to suppress the Polish resistance, and Lithuanian Jews also suffered at the hands of collaborators, losing nearly all but 10,000 Jews in the country itself (Niewyk).
In conclusion, the reasons and results of collaboration during the Holocaust were many. Some people and governments worked with the Nazis because they genuinely hated Jews; others felt they had no choice, or else they would face reprisals themselves. Some, like the Jewish Councils, thought they were working with the Nazis to make conditions better for the Jews in the ghettos. However, the results of collaboration, between the councils and the police forces and civilian militias, led to millions of deaths of Jews before the end of World War II. The complex and fascinating reasons behind collaboration were never exactly the same from person to person, but their complicity in the Holocaust remains baffling and shocking regardless of the circumstances.
Works Cited
Bergen, Doris L. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 2nd edition
Kaplan, Marion. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
Glowinski, Michal and Marci Shore. The Black Seasons
Niewyk, Donald L. The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th edition
